


Marraines

by lirin



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, crossovering treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-09 22:55:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12285966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: Fairy godmothers run in the family.





	Marraines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [karrenia_rune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/gifts).



> Many thanks to drayton for a fine job of betaing as always!

~Merope~

When Merope turned ten, her father took her to tea at Claridge’s and gave her ‘the talk’. “You’re growing into a fine young lady,” he said. “You’re going to be a woman before we know it, and it’s time you knew the Ward family secret.”

Could it be a hidden treasure of gold and jewels? Perhaps one of Father’s great-great-grandfathers had been a pirate! Merope was terribly excited, but it turned out that the secret was just something silly. Solemnly, Father told her that everybody in his family had a fairy godmother. 

Merope winced in frustration. If he was going to play one of his practical jokes, couldn’t he have done it at home instead of here, where they were surrounded by people? At least the food was good. Merope determined to make the most of it, and took a decisive bite of scone.

When Merope turned seventeen, her parents said she was old enough to visit universities by herself. If she’d chosen Cambridge, where both of them had gone, they would have accompanied her. But Merope thought Oxford’s history department was better, and thus it was that she was standing alone in the quad of Balliol when she met her fairy godmother.

“What do you want out of life?” her godmother asked her. “Do you want to meet a handsome man, or move to another country, or become a successful politician? I can help you.”

Merope didn’t know if she believed that a fairy godmother could actually help her, but she knew what her answer was. “I want to be a historian.”

Half a decade later, she thought perhaps she should have been more specific that she wanted to be the glamorous sort of historian that didn’t have to deal with children’s infectious diseases, but at least the vicar was awfully good-looking.

~Binnie~

Mum used to ask her, once in a while, what she thought of the idea of fairy godmothers. Not at first, when they were at Lady Caroline’s, nor later, when she and Alf were trying to hide their mother’s death and not talk to anybody too much; but only after Mike had died and Polly had gone away to marry her ARP warden and Mum had adopted her and Alf. Then Mum started asking. Every few months, she would venture the topic of fairy tales, and ask Binnie what she thought of fairy godmothers, and if she ever wished she’d had one.

“You’re the closest thing I’ve had to a fairy godmother,” Binnie would say. She wondered if that was what Mum expected her to say, if Mum wanted to hear her say it.

Usually Mum laughed it off, and went back to what she had been doing. Only once did she say more. “Oh, no, I’m nothing like a fairy godmother,” she said. “I just took care of you and Alf because it was the right thing to do and because I care about you, not—whyever it is that fairies help people. And it’s been a lot of hard work. Fairies just flit around and never do much work at all, so far as I know.”

“Then you’re even better than a fairy godmother,” Binnie said, and hugged her.

When her “real” fairy godmother showed up on her eighteenth birthday, it only made Binnie more certain of Mum’s superiority. The fairy criticized half of her wardrobe, told her to wear more makeup, and insisted she stop shyly ignoring the boy she fancied next door. In contrast, Mum said she’d buy her a new lipstick if she truly wanted it, but was she sure she wouldn’t rather save the money for school?

Binnie thought she preferred the real mother in the hand over the fairy godmother in the bush, as it were. She said “hi” to the neighbor boy (who ignored her...his loss), but she turned down the makeover. Being plain old Eileen Goode suited her just fine.

~Deirdre~

Fairy godmothers ran in the family, Mummy said. They weren’t particularly good at the business of godmothering, though. They showed up when you were born (though sometimes not even then), and once or twice when you were older, and that was it. So you had to make the most of it when they did show up. That was why Deirdre kept a notebook with her wherever she went.

It was full of crossouts and scribbles as she had reprioritized over the years, and half the pages were torn out. “Make boys pay attention to me,” the current list read; “updated wardrobe; job interview?” She read it all out to her fairy godmother when the lady showed up the morning of her sixteenth birthday in a poof of sparkles and pink.

“And that’s all you want?” her godmother asked. “Do you have any requests related to your schoolwork? You still have all of sixth form ahead of you, I believe.”

“Sixth form isn’t for me,” Deirdre said. “I’ve applied for a hairdressing apprenticeship. But as far as this year of school goes, is there anything you can do to make me more popular? There’s this footballer in my class, I’m sure he’d pay attention to me if I were just a bit prettier.”

Her fairy godmother sighed. “That’s my job, sweetheart,” she said. “Now, give us a twirl, and we’ll get started.”

The next few months were the most enjoyable that school had ever been. Deirdre wasn't sure if it was the changes her godmother made or the confidence she got from knowing she had a fairy godmother and everyone else didn't, but she didn't particularly care. For the first time in her life, she enjoyed being Deirdre.

~Colin~

Mother used to joke about her fairy godmother. Her old livein—not Eric, the one before—would ask her where she got this or that article of clothing (“You should get another one, darling, it looks lovely on you.”) and she’d tease “Oh, Arne, you like this old thing? My fairy godmother gave it to me,” and wink. But whenever he was gone, and she and Colin alone, she never joked like that.

Once, when Colin was ten, she sat him down, and told him seriously that he really ought to be prepared in case his fairy godmother did show up someday. What would he ask for? What did he want most?

Colin thought she was joking, like she did with Arne. He laughed. But Mother didn’t. With a huff, she snapped, “Fine, be that way,” and stomped into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea.

So he was completely unprepared, although not completely surprised, when he turned out to actually have a fairy godmother. She appeared when he was twelve, on the train to Oxford, where he was going to visit Great-aunt Mary. His godmother’s dress was necrotically shiny and wide enough to fill the aisle of the train. And she was in a hurry. She rolled her eyes as Colin hemmed and hawed. Finally, he asked for there to be more people in his life that cared about him. Not that Mother didn’t care, of course, but she just got so distracted that she would forget to show that she cared. It was understandable, really. “Oh, and can I have a gobstopper, too?”

She gave him the gobstopper, but she must have made a mistake about the rest. Mother’s gifts never came, and Great-aunt Mary was so busy that he was stuck with a bunch of unhappy people he didn’t know—although at least things were more interesting than they would have been in Kent. Then Great-aunt Mary died. She had been the nicest family member he had, and Colin felt betrayed by his fairy grandmother. He'd asked for more people to care about him, not fewer. And Mr. Dunworthy, who he’d thought was the closest thing to what his fairy godmother had promised, was unconscious in hospital.

It wasn’t until years later that he realized this really had been the new beginning he’d wanted. And when his turn came to tell the next generation about their family secret, he made sure to warn them that fairy godmothers worked in mysterious ways.


End file.
